a comprehensive guide to mlm shipping habits in transformative fandom
anonymous said:
Ok, this is going to be a controversial one, but her me out: do you think it’s a bit weird that so many women in the fandom (most of them straight or bi) only show interest in mlm ships? I know on a personal level everybody has their reasons and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking mlm in any sense, but for so many women to only relate to relationships where they aren’t represented is a bit… weird. Not to mention knee-jerk reactions to any mlf pairing 🤔
This is far from a controversial question. People have been mystified that transformative fandom - primarily made up of women* - is ‘only’ interested in mlm for as long as transformative fandom has been a recognized phenomenon.
A caveat for the terminology in this post: as society at large tends to forget/ignore/reject the gender spectrum and transgender people, ‘male/men’ = characters referred to with male pronouns in canon and ‘female/women’ = characters referred to with female pronouns. (NB/agender/genderqueer people don’t come up, unfortunately.)
So first let me point out that transformative fandom is not only on AO3/tumblr. AO3 stats in particular give a very skewed idea of what fandom focuses on. Both ff.net and wattpad - fanfic archives which dwarf AO3 - have far higher ratios of m/f (to m/m) fic than mlm-focused AO3: ff.net is about 50/50 and has more genfic (no pairings) while wattpad features lots of m/f fic, often in the form of (male)character/(female)reader stories.
In other words, Fanworks are NOT mostly mlm; it’s just likely that we tend to notice m/m more than m/f because m/f is the ‘default’ - unmarked, and thus overlooked.
secondly, while you’ve lumped straight and bisexual women together in your ask, if you separate straight and bisexual fandom participants you get an interesting picture in regards to the typical ‘straight women are the biggest m/m fans’ common wisdom:
In a 2013 survey of AO3 users*, heterosexual female respondents were slightly less likely to be both readers and creators of M/M works - 87% were readers, compared to 90% overall, and 32-33% were creators, compared to 40% overall.
according to a variety of smaller, previous polls on various sites, the majority of m/m (and f/f) fans identify as queer (and based on a thorough dissertation pending, the stats are about 50/50 ‘mostly straight’/’mostly non-straight’).
Now with those caveats out of the way … why is mlm popular in a space that is primarily dominated by women**? I honestly don’t think this can be truly quantified. the reasons vary from person to person too greatly. But there’s a lot of theories and a lot of anecdotal evidence for those theories. Here’s some of them, in no particular order:
it’s male privilege (sexism/misogyny).
Male privilege: Male societal privilege and and bias feeds into media bias. media is heavily male-dominated (more male characters, usually played by cis men where actors are called for, with more central/leading roles and more screentime). Even conversations between female characters tend to focus on the male characters. The media bias then itself contributes back to societal bias - and fandom bias - towards seeing men/male characters as more interesting, more dynamic, and more varied than women/female characters.
Flip side: societal bias towards men leads directly to a relative lack of interest in women/female characters. they have less screentime, less interaction with one another, and are less centralized by the plot. Their stories are more likely to revolve around a male character in the cast. And when they do get the same treatment as male characters, audiences are very hard on them.
it’s simply a function of statistics. the overrepresentation of male characters compared to female characters has a natural consequence. If you do the math, that exponentially increases the odds of a mlm ship being fanned over compared to an m/f or wlw ship.
it’s also an observable phenomenon across multiple character demographics.
in addition to having more roles, relationships between masc characters are often where the emotional heart of a story lies. people tend to ping on that in and create fan content for it.
it’s because fanworks are a function of wish fulfillment, taking various forms:
straight women, being sexually attracted to men, consume mlm (nsfw) fanworks for the same reason straight men might consume wlw porn: double the eye candy. (the fact that straight women are actually less likely to consume or create mlm fanfic than non-straight women suggests this may not be as prevalent as often assumed.)
non-straight characters are still incredibly uncommon in mass media; transformative fandom, which is mostly non-straight, creates their own representation (perhaps with bias towards the characters with more emotional connection in canon.)
non-straight relationships are even less common than non-straight characters, and are unlikely to get much canon focus if they do exist. fandom fills this gap. (conversely, m/f pairings are far more likely to receive canon fulfillment and canon focus, so there’s less need to create fan content for it.)
(white cis) male bodies are both more common in (western) mass media and ‘unmarked’. like m/f pairings, white cis males are perceived as ‘default’ due to white/cis/male privilege. If racism, transphobia, and sexism weren’t enough on their own to increase content about pairings between characters of that description, that privilege also means that fictional characters of this description are the least likely to be seen as needing protection by policing elements in fandom, increasing the free rein on content creation. thus: fandom produces more mlm fanworks despite being fannish over m/f and f/f ships as well, which increases content obscurity, which increases free rein, which increases content creation, etc.
relatedly: women’s stories/sexuality is too fraught. male privilege/internalized misogyny leads directly to women’s stories and afab bodies being politicized. some afab people have hangups about fictional representations of themselves in nsfw content, being uncomfortable with portrayals of people like themselves in fiction, and even sickened by depictions of pleasure experienced by bodies with vaginas (particularly in f/f works). mlm stories create enough distance for women to enjoy it without distraction by concerns of misogyny or fear of something hitting too close to home in the experience (and cis mlm nsfw content in particular provides a safe space for afab people who are bothered by depictions of afab pleasure for whatever reason).
it’s an outlet for afab people discovering they are not straight or not cis. they may still identify as a ‘cishet woman’, but they are consuming mlm works because it resonates with a part of them that they haven’t consciously recognized.
In conclusion: at first glance it might seem weird that fandom seems to spend a lot of time on mlm, but this is both not entirely true and (where it is true) there are many, many reasons for it.
I’ve spent 8 hours compiling links and piecing together this post now so that you can have a comprehensive guide to the reasons that parts of fandom seem to be dominated by mlm stories, so I’m going to wrap up now. For more fanwork statistics, try these links:
AO3 Ship Stats Masterpost by @centrumlumina
ToastyStats tag on @destinationtoast
For more analysis on why mlm is popular (and wlw not so much), try these links:
Why is there so much slash on AO3?
Why mlm? (and some of the responses)
Femslash and Fandom
Femslash Can Save the World if We Let it
and this essay briefly sums up the migration of online transformative fandom over the last 15 years or so, giving context to AO3 fic stats.
One final note: the comparative prevalence of mlm to wlw would suggest that male privilege and bias is primary motivation for its popularity, but wlw was not always so scarce as it seems to be now. Just as you might expect, shows with a mostly-female cast had massive amounts of wlw content: sailor moon, utena, etc. But there’s reason to believe that purity culture has stifled wlw popularity, and that’s a damn shame.
*The largest fandom demographic survey from a reputable source (that I am aware of) was based on AO3 users, advertised primarily via Tumblr, and analyzed by @centrumlumina in 2013. I’m pulling my stats from this survey, but be aware it has significant limitations.
**in my personal experience, many of those in fandom who identify as women are cis women, but also many of those in fandom who do not identify as women are afab/were socialized as a woman before identifying differently. However, I don’t currently have survey data to back this up.
